An April 1 federal indictment charged two men, Antonio Venti and Michael Kuilan, with supplying the drugs that killed transgender activist Cecilia Gentili in February. Among other things, Venti and Kuilan are accused of causing Gentili's death by distributing a mixture of heroin and fentanyl, a felony punishable by a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison and a maximum of life.

Gentili "was tragically poisoned in her Brooklyn home [by] fentanyl-laced heroin," Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a press release. "Fentanyl is a public health crisis. Our Office will spare no effort in the pursuit of justice for the many New Yorkers who have lost loved ones due to this lethal drug." The indictment "delivers a strong message to anyone who profits from poisoning our communities with illicit drugs," New York City Police Commissioner Edward Caban added. "It is imperative that we continue to hold distributors accountable for their callous actions."

That self-righteous stance obscures the role that drug warriors like Peace and Caban played in killing Gentili. If Venti and Kuilan were "callous," how should we describe public officials who are dedicated to enforcing laws that predictably cause tens of thousands of deaths like this one every year?

Those laws create a black market in which the composition and potency of drugs is uncertain and highly variable. They also push traffickers toward highly potent drugs such as fentanyl, which are easier to conceal and smuggle. As a result, drug users like Gentili typically don't know exactly what they are consuming, which magnifies the risk of a fatal mistake. The "poisoning" that Peace and Caban decried therefore is a consequence of the policies they were proudly enforcing in this very case.

In this context, it would be perverse to hold Gentili responsible for causing her own death. Peace and Caban instead blamed Venti and Kuilan, which might seem more plausible until you consider the complexities of illicit drug distribution. As the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) noted, "People who sell drugs rarely know the exact contents of their drug supply or a given dose. Research shows drug mixing is typically done at much higher levels of the supply chain."

It is clear neither Kuilan nor Venti intended to kill Gentili. Yet the mandatory penalties they face are much more severe than the federal penalties for voluntary or involuntary manslaughter and New York's penalties for criminally negligent homicide. That distinction hinges on the legal status of the drugs they sold, as opposed to their culpability in Gentili's death.

Prosecutions like these make a mockery of justice. "Drug-induced homicide laws, mandatory minimum laws, and other severe penalties that people face when they sell or share drugs that result in a fatal overdose primarily punish people involved with low-level selling who often use drugs themselves," the DPA noted. The New York Times reported that Venti, who was previously convicted of "petty larceny and attempted drug sales," is an electrician who has "struggled with drug addiction." Even drug users who merely share purchases with friends or relatives have been prosecuted for causing their deaths.

These attempts to convert accidental overdoses into homicides are dangerous as well as morally dubious. They "cost lives because fear of prosecution deters people from seeking help in an emergency," the DPA argues. "Drug-induced homicide prosecutions may have the unintended consequence of people failing to seek medical help in a drug overdose situation, resulting in increased likelihood of death."

Prohibition, in short, created the hazard that killed Gentili. It compounded that hazard by fostering the use of additives such as fentanyl and the animal tranquilizer xylazine (which was also detected in Gentili's blood). And it made the resulting overdoses more perilous by discouraging prompt intervention. The answer, according to Peace and Caban, is zealous enforcement of the same laws that produced this disaster.

Frank Tarentino, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's New York Division, concurred. "Fentanyl is a deadly drug that dealers mix into their product and has accounted for 70% of drug related deaths nationwide," he said in Peace's press release. "Drug poisonings take too many lives too soon from communities nationwide and DEA is committed to bringing to justice those responsible."

If Americans truly demanded accountability from "those responsible" for drug-related deaths, they would start with the politicians and law enforcement officials who are perversely committed to making drug use as dangerous as possible.

The post Don't Blame Dealers for Fentanyl Deaths. Blame Drug Warriors. appeared first on Reason.com.

As anyone who has traveled by plane in the last decade can attest, one of the few—perhaps only—things that make modern commercial flying tolerable is a strong onboard libation. For those lucky enough to travel internationally, the booze is sometimes even free. But could this last vestige of mile-high sanity be snatched from us like a water bottle at an airport security checkpoint? 

Newly released research argues that it should be. The study, published in Thorax by researchers from the Institute of Aerospace Medicine in Germany, concludes that in-flight alcohol can increase the risk of heart attack. While the topline conclusion sounds concerning and compelling, the research itself is less so. 

The researchers used a sampling of a mere 48 people between 18 and 40 years of age, half of whom slept in a sleep lab that mirrored normal on-ground conditions while the other half slept in a lab that simulated high-altitude cabin pressure. On the first night of the test, everyone was instructed to go to bed. On the second night, each group was given the assignment of drinking booze and then passing out. (How one qualifies to become a test subject for a study of this kind is unclear at the time of this writing). The researchers then monitored each group's heart rate and sleep patterns.

The results showed that those who consumed alcohol and slept in the high-altitude simulation experienced the most heightened heart rates and the lowest oxygen-blood levels while sleeping. The researchers conclude that those with existing cardiac and pulmonary conditions could be in danger—as well as those with sleep apnea and other respiratory ailments—but even healthy individuals were at risk.

"Even in young and healthy individuals, the combination of alcohol intake with sleeping under hypobaric conditions poses a considerable strain on the cardiac system and might lead to exacerbation of symptoms in patients with cardiac or pulmonary diseases," the researchers state. "Our findings strongly suggest that the inflight consumption of alcoholic beverages should be restricted."

One might be tempted to brush this off as merely the work of a few teetotalers from across the pond, but as students of the temperance movement know well, prohibitionary brush fires can start with the smallest of sparks. In fact, the in-flight booze ban movement has already begun to catch on in America. 

During the COVID pandemic, reports of unruly and intoxicated airplane passengers getting into physical altercations with flight attendants led several airlines to suspend their on-board alcohol service entirely. Despite this built-in market reaction—after all, no airline wants to be the arena for a drunken brawl in the clouds—numerous federal lawmakers inevitably joined the booze ban chorus.

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D–Ore.) called for a ban on to-go alcohol from airport bars in 2021 after he allegedly watched a fellow passenger order three shots of alcohol in a to-go cup from an airport bar and then board the plane. Sen. Ed Markey (D–Mass.), citing reports that anti-mask passengers were the ones creating the on-board ruckuses, went on record in support of banning the hard stuff at least temporarily.

The study claiming to show heart and other health risks will likely further embolden the no-alcohol-on-planes crowd. Lost in all of this is the reality that, as Rep. DeFazio's anecdote shows, many of the unruly passengers that caught media headlines involved those who were already intoxicated upon boarding the plane or brought their own alcohol on board.

Under Federal Aviation Administration regulations, it is already illegal for consumers to imbibe alcohol they bring onto a plane: "No person may drink any alcoholic beverage aboard an aircraft unless the certificate holder operating the aircraft has served that beverage to him." The rule goes on to state that airlines cannot permit already intoxicated passengers to board their planes or serve them more alcohol onboard. 

Therefore, a complete ban on in-flight alcohol would simply be another example of the government implementing more rules to address behavior that is largely already illegal. It also would clearly incentivize more passengers to sneak their own alcohol on board—something that already happened when airlines suspended alcohol service during the pandemic. It doesn't take a libertarian to understand that if you ban a legal product—like in-flight alcohol service—you will inevitably create a more robust black-market workaround. 

A better approach would be to allow airlines to continue selling and serving in-flight alcohol. Like servers at a bar, flight attendants can monitor how much alcohol each passenger has consumed, instead of supercharging an uncontrollable airborne BYOB free-for-all. As for potential health concerns, passengers should be empowered to make their own decisions based on knowing themselves best. Most people already do this in situations such as avoiding air travel after scuba diving or major surgery, and there is no reason they can't do the same in determining whether to drink before or during a flight.

Some clever travelers have pointed out that the above-mentioned FAA regulation merely says that a person cannot drink alcohol on an airplane unless it is served by airplane staff. This technically suggests that you can bring your own alcohol on board—as long as it's in a mini bottle—and simply ask your flight attendant to serve it. At least a few airlines appear to be open to this.  

Now might be the time to find one such airline, book a flight, and enjoy this Prohibition-era 12-Mile Limit cocktail in defiant—but technically still legal—protest:

Prohibition-Era 12-Mile Limit Cocktail

Ingredients:

• ½ oz rye whiskey
• ½ oz cognac
• ½ oz rum
• ½ oz grenadine (real grenadine, not red syrup)
• ½ oz lemon juice 
• Lemon wedges (for garnish)
• Ice

Instructions:

1. Obtain two mini bottles of liquor, each under the 3.4 oz TSA liquid carry-on limit.
2. Fill one mini bottle with ½ oz rye whiskey and ½ oz cognac, topped off with your favorite rum.
3. Fill the second mini bottle with ½ oz grenadine and ½ oz lemon juice. Store this bottle in the fridge until leaving for the airport.
4. Bring both mini bottles on board with you in your carry-on.
5. Ask your flight attendant to pour the contents of the liquor-filled bottle over a cup of ice.
6. Add the grenadine and lemon juice mixture to the cup.
7. Garnish with lemon wedges.
8. Stir with the provided plastic stirring stick.
9. Sit back, relax, and enjoy your cocktail (while you still can).

The post Oh God, What If Congress Bans Drinking on Airplanes? appeared first on Reason.com.

In May 2023, OpenAI founder Sam Altman testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about ChatGPT. Altman demonstrated how his company's tool could massively reduce the cost of retrieving, processing, conveying, and perhaps even modifying the collective knowledge of mankind as stored in computer memories worldwide. A user with no special equipment or access can request a research report, story, poem, or visual presentation and receive in a matter of seconds a written response.

Because of ChatGPT's seemingly vast powers, Altman called for government regulation to "mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful AI systems" and recommended that U.S. or global leaders form an agency that would license AI systems and have the authority to "take that license away and ensure compliance with safety standards." Major AI players around the world quickly roared approval of Altman's "I want to be regulated" clarion call.

Welcome to the brave new world of AI and cozy crony capitalism, where industry players, interest groups, and government agents meet continuously to monitor and manage investor-owned firms.

Bootleggers and Baptists Have a 'Printing Press Moment'

ChatGPT has about 100 million weekly users worldwide, according to Altman. Some claim it had the most successful launch of a consumer product in history, and Altman anticipates far more future users. He's now seeking U.S. government approval to raise billions from United States, Middle East, and Asian investors to build a massive AI-chip manufacturing facility.

In his testimony, Altman referred to Johannes Gutenberg's printing press, which enabled the Enlightenment, revolutionized communication, and—following the dictum "knowledge is power"—destabilized political and religious regimes worldwide. Altman suggested that, once again, the world faces a "printing press moment": another time of profound change that could bring untold benefits as well as unimaginable disturbances to human well-being. A related letter signed by Altman, other AI industry executives, and scores of other leaders in the field, underlined their profound concern and said: "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war."

Altman's call for regulation also has a parallel in the early history of printing. Something similar to the licensing control suggested by Altman was used by Queen Elizabeth I in 16th century England. She assigned transferable printing rights to a particular printing guild member in a frustrated effort to regulate and censor printing.

Altman's moral appeal rests on the notion of preserving a nation of people or their way of life. In that way, it satisfies the "Baptist" component of the bootleggers and Baptists theory of regulation, which I developed decades ago and which explains why calls to "regulate me" may be seen as just about businesses earning extra profits.

An especially durable form of government regulation takes hold when there are at least two interest groups supporting it, but for decidedly different reasons. One supports the pending regulation for widely held moral reasons (like old-school Baptists who want to bar legal Sunday liquor sales). The other is in it for the money (like the bootleggers who see opportunity in a day without any legal competition).

Altman's "Baptist" altar call may well be altruistic—who can know?—but it shows his hand as a potential bootlegger, too. After all, a government-sheltered AI market could provide a first-mover advantage as his entity helps to determine the appropriate standards that will be applied to everyone else. It could yield a newer, cozier crony capitalism that has not previously existed in quite the same form.

Apparently, some other potential bootleggers heard the altar call too and liked the idea of being in a cozy cartel. Soon, Microsoft insisted that thoroughgoing government regulation of AI would be necessary. In another Baptist-like appeal, Microsoft President Brad Smith said:"A licensing regime is fundamentally about ensuring a certain baseline of safety, of capability. We have to prove that we can drive before we get a license. If we drive recklessly, we can lose it. You can apply those same concepts, especially to AI uses that will implicate safety."

Google felt the call as well and provided a statement recommending AI regulation on a global and cross-agency basis. Google CEO Sundar Pichai emphasized, "AI is too important not to regulate and too important not to regulate well." Another February 2024 policy statement from Google contains a litany of plans to cooperate with competitors and government agencies to advance a safe and effective generative AI environment.

How AI Will Regulate AI

In a December 2023 report on U.S. government agency activity for FY 2022, the Government Accountability Office indicated that 20 of the 23 agencies surveyed reported some 1,200 AI activities, including everything from analyzing data from cameras and radar to preparing for planetary explorations.

Bootlegger and Baptist–inspired regulatory episodes in the past typically involved in-depth studies and hearings and ended up with lasting rules. That was the case through most of the 20th century, when the Interstate Commerce Commission regulated prices, entry, and service in specific industries, and in the 1970s, when the Environmental Protection Agency was equipped with command-and-control regulations in an alleged attempt to correct market failures.

Sometimes it took years to develop regulations to address a particular environmental problem. By the time the final rules were announced and frozen in time, the situation to be resolved may have changed fundamentally.

Cheap information enabled by generative AI changes all this. By using AI, the generative AI regulatory process—pending at the level of California, the federal government, and other governments worldwide—so far favors ongoing, never-ending governance processes. These will focus on major generative AI producers but involve collaboration among industry leaders, consumer and citizen groups, scientists, and government officials all engaged in a newly blossomed cozy cronyism.Under the European Union's AI Act, an AI Office will preside over processes that continually steer and affect generative AI outcomes.

If more traditional command-and-control or public utility regulation were used, which raises its own challenges, AI producers would be allowed to operate within a set of regulatory guardrails while responding to market incentives and opportunities. They would not be required to engage in cooperative engagement with regulators, their own competitors, and other supposed stakeholders in this larger enterprise. In this AI world, bootleggers and Baptists now sit together in the open.

Specifically, this burgeoning approach to AI regulation requires the implementation of "sandboxes," where regulated parties join with regulators and advisers in exploring new algorithms and other AI products. While sandboxes have some beneficial things to offer industries in new or uncertain regulatory environments, members of the unusually collaborative AI industry are poised to learn what competitors are developing as government referees look on.

The risk, should this environment persist, is that radically new products and approaches in the arena never get a chance to be developed and benefit consumers. The incentives to discover new AI products and profit from them will be blunted by cartel-like behavior in a new bootleggers and Baptists world. Countries and firms that refuse to play by these rules would likely become the only fountainhead for major new AI developments.

The End of the AI Wild West

No matter what form of regulation holds sway, generative AI is out of the box and will not go away. Already, computer capacity requirements for processing the software are falling, and already, generative AI's applications to new information challenges are exploding. At the same time, government agents' ability to regulate is improving and the payoff to the regulated for working hand-in-hand with government and organized interest groups is growing.

Generative AI's Wild West days may be drawing to a close. This is when invention, expansion, and growth can occur unconstrained by regulation while within the bounds of local courts, judges, property rights, and common law. Novel developments will still occur, but at a slower pace. The generative AI printing press moment may expand to become an era. But just as the Gutenberg invention led initially to the regulation and even outlawing of the printing press across many major countries, new information technologies emerged anyway and effective regulation of real knowledge became impossible.

A renaissance was set in motion despite official attempts to stymie the technology. Freer presses emerged, and eventually the telegraph, telephones, typewriters, mimeograph, Xerox, fax, and the internet itself. Knowledge flows cannot be stopped. We moderns may learn again that the human spirit cannot be forever bottled up, and over the long run market competition will be allowed, if not encouraged, to move mankind closer to a more prosperous era.

America's Founders were enlightened and well aware of Europe's troublesome efforts to regulate Gutenberg's printing press. They insisted on freedom of speech and a free press. We may eventually see similar wisdom applied to generative AI control—but don't hold your breath.

The post AI's Cozy Crony Capitalism appeared first on Reason.com.

The Los Angeles Press Club on Thursday announced the finalists for the 66th Annual Southern California Journalism Awards, recognizing the best work in print, online, and broadcast media published in 2023.

Reason, which is headquartered in L.A., is a finalist for 14 awards.

A sincere thanks to the judges who read and watched our submissions, as well as to the Reason readers, subscribers, and supporters, without whom we would not be able to produce impactful journalism.

Senior Editor Elizabeth Nolan Brown is a finalist for best technology reporting across all media platforms—print, radio, podcast, TV, and online—for her November 2023 print piece, "Do Social Media Algorithms Polarize Us? Maybe Not," in which she challenged what has become the traditional wisdom around the root of online toxicity:

For years, politicians have been proposing new regulations based on simple technological "solutions" to issues that stem from much more complex phenomena. But making Meta change its algorithms or shifting what people see in their Twitter feeds can't overcome deeper issues in American politics—including parties animated more by hate and fear of the other side than ideas of their own. This new set of studies should serve as a reminder that expecting tech companies to somehow fix our dysfunctional political culture won't work.

Science Reporter Ronald Bailey is a finalist for best medical/health reporting in print or online for "Take Nutrition Studies With a Grain of Salt," also from the November 2023 issue, where he meticulously dissected why the epidemiology of food and drink is, well, "a mess":

This doesn't mean you can eat an entire pizza, a quart of ice cream, and six beers tonight without some negative health effects. (Sorry.) It means nutritional epidemiology is a very uncertain guide for how to live your life and it certainly isn't fit for setting public policy.

In short, take nutrition research with a grain of salt. And don't worry: Even though the World Health Organization (WHO) says "too much salt can kill you," the Daily Mail noted in 2021 that "it's not as bad for health as you think."

Managing Editor Jason Russell is a finalist in print/online sports commentary for his August/September 2023 cover story, "Get Your Politics Out of My Pickleball," which explored the emerging fault lines as the government gets involved in America's weirdest, fastest-growing sport:

Pickleball will always have haters—and if its growth continues, local governments will still face public pressure to build more courts. Some critics think the sport is a fad, but strong growth continues for the time being, even as the COVID-19 pandemic ends and other activities compete for time and attention. There's no need to force nonplayers to support it with their tax dollars, especially when entrepreneurs seem eager to provide courts. If pickleball does end up as an odd footnote in sporting history, ideally it won't be taxpayers who are on the hook for converting courts to new uses.

Reporter C.J. Ciaramella is a finalist in magazine investigative reporting for his October 2023 cover story, "'I Knew They Were Scumbags,'" a nauseating piece on federal prison guards who confessed to rape—and got away with it:

Berman's daughter, Carleane, was one of at least a dozen women who were abused by corrupt correctional officers at FCC Coleman, a federal prison complex in Florida. In December, a Senate investigation revealed that those correctional officers had admitted in sworn interviews with internal affairs investigators that they had repeatedly raped women under their control.

Yet thanks to a little known Supreme Court precedent and a culture of corrupt self-protection inside the prison system, none of those guards were ever prosecuted—precisely because of the manner in which they confessed.

Senior Editor Jacob Sullum is a finalist in magazine commentary for "Biden's 'Marijuana Reform' Leaves Prohibition Untouched," from the January 2023 issue, in which he disputed the notion that President Joe Biden has fundamentally changed America's response to cannabis:

By himself, Biden does not have the authority to resolve the untenable conflict between state and federal marijuana laws. But despite his avowed transformation from an anti-drug zealot into a criminal justice reformer, he has stubbornly opposed efforts to repeal federal pot prohibition.

That position is contrary to the preferences expressed by more than two-thirds of Americans, including four-fifths of Democrats and half of Republicans. The most Biden is willing to offer them is his rhetorical support for decriminalizing cannabis consumption—a policy that was on the cutting edge of marijuana reform in the 1970s.

Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward is a finalist for best magazine columnist for "Is Chaos the Natural State of Congress?" from the December 2023 issue, "Don't Just Hire 'Better Cops.' Punish the Bad Ones," from the April 2023 issue, and (a personal favorite) "Bodies Against the State," from the February 2023 issue:

Governments do unconscionable things every day; it is in their nature. But not all transgressions are equal. In the wake of the Iran team's silent anthem protest, an Iranian journalist asked U.S. men's soccer captain Tyler Adams how he could play for a country that discriminates against black people like him. What makes the U.S. different, he replied, is that "we're continuing to make progress every day."

The most perfect and enduring image of a person weaponizing his body against the state was taken after the brutal suppression of protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The unknown Chinese man standing in front of a tank didn't have to hold a sign for the entire world to know exactly what the problem was.

Reporter Christian Britschgi is a finalist for best long-form magazine feature on business/government for "The Town Without Zoning," from the August/September 2023 issue, in which he reported on the fight over whether Caroline, New York, should impose its first-ever zoning code:

Whatever the outcome, the zoning debate raging in Caroline is revealing. It shows how even in a small community without major enterprises or serious growth pressures, planners can't adequately capture and account for everything people might want to do with their land.

There's a gap between what zoners can do and what they imagine they can design. That knowledge problem hasn't stopped cities far larger and more complex than Caroline from trying to scientifically sort themselves with zoning. They've developed quite large and complex problems as a result.

Associate Editor Billy Binion (hi, it's me) is a finalist for best activism journalism online for the web feature "They Fell Behind on Their Property Taxes. So the Government Sold Their Homes—and Kept the Profits," which explored an underreported form of legalized larceny: governments across the U.S. seizing people's homes over modest tax debts, selling the properties, and keeping the surplus equity.

Geraldine Tyler is a 94-year-old woman spending the twilight of her life in retirement, as 94-year-olds typically do. But there isn't much that's typical about it.

Tyler has spent the last several years fighting the government from an assisted living facility after falling $2,300 behind on her property taxes. No one disputes that she owed a debt. What is in dispute is if the government acted constitutionally when, to collect that debt, it seized her home, sold it, and kept the profit.

If that sounds like robbery, it's because, in some sense, it is. But it's currently legal in at least 12 states across the country, so long as the government is doing the robbing.

Senior Producer Austin Bragg, Director of Special Projects Meredith Bragg, Producer John Carter, and freelancer extraordinaire Andrew Heaton are finalists for best humor/satire writing across all broadcast mediums—TV, film, radio, or podcast—for the hilarious "Everything is political: board games," which "exposes" how Republicans and Democrats interpret everyone's favorite games from their partisan perspectives. (Spoiler: Everyone's going to lose.)

The Bragg brothers are nominated again in that same category—best humor/satire writing—along with Remy for "Look What You Made Me Do (Taylor Swift Parody)," in which lawmakers find culprits for the recent uptick in thefts—the victims.

Deputy Managing Editor of Video and Podcasts Natalie Dowzicky and Video Editor Regan Taylor are finalists in best commentary/analysis of TV across all media platforms for "What really happened at Waco," which explored a Netflix documentary on how the seeds of political polarization that roil our culture today were planted at Waco.

Editor at Large Matt Welch, Producer Justin Zuckerman, Motion Graphic Designer Adani Samat, and freelancer Paul Detrick are finalists in best activism journalism across any broadcast media for "The monumental free speech case the media ignored," which made the case that the legal odyssey and criminal prosecutions associated with Backpage were a direct assault on the First Amendment—despite receiving scant national attention from journalists and free speech advocates.

Associate Editor Liz Wolfe, Senior Producer Zach Weissmueller, Video Editor Danielle Thompson, Video Art Director Isaac Reese, and Producer Justin Zuckerman are finalists in best solutions journalism in any broadcast media for "Why homelessness is worse in California than Texas," which investigated why homelessness is almost five times as bad in the Golden State—and what can be done about it.

Finally, Senior Producer Zach Weissmueller, Video Editor Danielle Thompson, Video Art Director Isaac Reese, and Audio Engineer Ian Keyser are finalists in best documentary short for "The Supreme Court case that could upend the Clean Water Act," which did a deep dive into a Supreme Court case concerning a small-town Idaho couple that challenged how the Environmental Protection Agency defines a "wetland"—and what that means for property rights.

Winners will be announced on Sunday, June 23 at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Subscribe to Reason here, watch our video journalism here, and find our podcasts here.

The post <em>Reason</em> Is a Finalist for 14 Southern California Journalism Awards appeared first on Reason.com.

It's a fairly well-established principle that the state can intervene when an individual harms another person: Your right to swing your fist ends when it hits my face. But what about when someone's actions harm only themselves?

For some, that's another opportunity for the government to get involved. They're the "fun police," constantly using public policy to nudge, cajole, or outright force you to accept their idea of a healthy, moral lifestyle. In a new limited-run podcast series produced by the Consumer Choice Center, a group that opposes paternalism in various forms, co-hosts Bill Wirtz and Yaël Ossowski turn a skeptical eye toward the do-gooders and nanny-staters who campaign against drinking, smoking, gambling, and more.

Wirtz, Ossowski, and their guests trace the roots of modern neo-prohibitionist movements to the Anti-Saloon League, which laid out the blueprint followed by public scolds today. Bankrolled by the Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford families, the League helped turn the "once-fringe moral movement" of alcohol prohibition into a "social force that dominated political life" and culminated in the 18th Amendment (and disaster). The same model is still deployed today, with wealthy funders such as former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg backing efforts to ban products from vape pens to Big Gulps.

Fun Police veers between practical examples of nanny statism and deeper discussions about the role of the state. It makes a compelling case for letting people live freely, even if that comes with a little risk.

The post Review: <i>Fun Police</i> Podcast Exposes the Nanny State appeared first on Reason.com.

Earlier this week, lawmakers on the House and Senate Appropriations Committees put forward six spending bills that would fund the government through the end of the year. In a press release, Republicans on the House committee bragged that the bills would "save taxpayers more than $200 billion over the next ten years"—a period of time over which the Congressional Budget Office predicts the national debt will expand by $20 trillion and eclipse the nation's gross domestic product.

Some of those savings come from cuts to federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). Unfortunately, even those cuts are much more modest than they appear.

In their press release, House Republicans boasted that the appropriations package "utilizes the power of the purse to address the weaponization of the growing bureaucracy within the FBI and ATF." Specifically, they do this by "reversing [ATF's] anti-Second Amendment overreach…by significantly reducing its overall funding by $122 million, a 7% decrease" from 2023, as well as holding the FBI "accountable for targeting everyday Americans by reducing its overall operating budget by $654 million and cutting its construction account by 95%."

But these already-meager cuts don't involve very much actual cutting.

The FBI's salaries and expenses totaled over $10 billion in 2023, and it requested over $11 billion for 2024; the appropriations bill would grant $10.6 billion—a bit less than the FBI wanted but only about one-half percent less than last year's budget and certainly nothing approaching the 6 percent cut Republicans bragged about.

Republicans get around this with some tricky math: In a 2022 omnibus spending bill, the Bureau received $652 million toward the construction of a campus in Huntsville, Alabama. Republicans include the $652 million when touting a 6 percent cut, even though the money apportioned for salaries and expenses barely budged.

In fact, when Republicans bragged about "cut[ting] the FBI's construction account by $621.9 million"—for a whopping 95 percent decrease—that precipitous drop uses the one-time Huntsville cash as its starting point. Besides, the FBI only asked for a $61.9 million construction budget, which would have constituted a 90 percent decrease on its own.

Meanwhile, the ATF received $1.672 billion for salaries and expenses in 2023, while the appropriations bill would apportion $1.625 billion—a decrease of just 2.8 percent, not the 7 percent drop House Republicans claimed. That supposed 7 percent cut of $122 million comes from adding the $47 million cut in salaries and another $75 million cut from construction costs. The ATF did not request any construction money in its 2024 budget, so boasting that this a cut is laughable. Just like with the FBI, judging salaries and expenses in an apples-to-apples comparison yields a much more modest cut.

Any sort of fiscal discipline should be welcomed, of course. But it's not like Republicans are dedicated to pruning federal law enforcement agencies across the board.

"The Drug Enforcement Administration was an outlier in the bill, as it would receive a modest funding bump," writes Eric Katz at Government Executive. The bill would fund the DEA with $2.57 billion; when accounting for revenue from diversion control programs, Republicans say the department would receive "$42.4 million more" than it did in 2023.

The bill also directs not only the DEA but also the FBI to prioritize the policing of fentanyl. The FBI is directed "to allocate the maximum amount of resources" to target the "trafficking" of fentanyl and other opioids. There's no sign of any recognition that prohibition is exactly why fentanyl has proliferated in the first place and that harm reduction measures would be much safer and more effective than a law enforcement solution.

In fact, Republicans openly state in their press release that the cuts are not intended to save taxpayers money, noting that the bill "right-siz[es] agencies and programs and redirects that funding to combat fentanyl and counter the People's Republic of China."

Clearly, when the federal government consistently spends much more than it takes in, there is room to cut and an imperative to do so. It's unfortunate, then, that Republican lawmakers are bragging about plans to cut $200 billion over 10 years—1 percent of the anticipated federal debt accrued in that time—and it's even more disturbing to know that they're fudging the numbers to even get that much.

The post Republicans Use Fuzzy Math To Claim Large FBI, ATF Cuts in Budget Bill appeared first on Reason.com.